The Measure of Man

Answering the Emperor’s Summons

“The enemies of the Emperor fear many things. They fear discovery, defeat, despair, and death. Yet there is one thing they fear above all others. They fear the wrath of the Space Marines!”—Imperial Maxim

In Deathwatch, you take on the role of a Space Marine—a genetically-enhanced warrior who has given up his very humanity in order to save Mankind. In addition, you are not just any Space Marine. You have been specially chosen to be inducted into an elite, special-mission force known as the Deathwatch.

As a Space Marine, you have already faced, and defeated, countless numbers of the Emperor’s foes. You have taken part in planet strikes, decending in drop-pods upon columns of fire, and brought the Emperor’s justice to the unclean. You have boarded haunted space hulks and purged with bolt and flame the slavering creatures lurking within. You have decended into the very bowels of the mightiest of hive cities, and emerged victorious over the ultra-violent forces of recidivism and heresy.

However, all of that was just the beginning. In the Deathwatch, the true horrors that seethe and gibber and hunger to devour the soul of Mankind await you. Only the very strongest are selected. Only those most blessed in the eyes of the Emperor prevail.

Serving the Deathwatch, you will face untold enemies. Some you have already met in battle and defeated many times over. The barbarous Ork, the perfidious Eldar, and the ravening Tyranids all await you, in greater numbers than ever before. Other vile xenos must also be faced, creatures not yet named in the annals of the Imperium. You must take the battle for survival into the unknown regions of space and root out the vile taint of the alien, before it can spread and infect the entire galaxy.

Other enemies wait too, for truly, the foes of Mankind never tire. The servants of the Ruinous Powers plot the downfall of the Imperium, and you must face perhaps the most terrible of enemies— the Traitor Legions, your own kin who turned against the Emperor at the very dawn of the Age of the Imperium.

To enter the Deathwatch is to take the most binding of oaths. Of what you see, what you kill, you may never tell, except to those you fight alongside. Your victories will go unheralded, your deeds unknown, and your name unrecorded save in the sealed archives of the mysterious Ordo Xenos. But the Deathwatch crave not glory; they desire only to serve, and to keep the darkness that hungers for the soul of Man at bay, to cast it into the night, never to return.

You are Deathwatch. You are the right hand of the Emperor, and none may stand before you.